Need help installing Joomla! 3.x? For all Joomla! 3.x installation issues please use this forum. Note: Users creating new sites can use either version 2.5 or 3.x. Please consider the availability of third-party templates and extensions when deciding which Joomla version to use.

EDIT: I just decided to uninstall all of my server related things and give XAMPP a go. That worked the trick so there must have been some configuration wrong somewhere, I'm guessing in the PHP side of things.

It seems that this issue has been posted a few times but nobody has really come up with a solution - hopefully this can be an exception.

The problem is simple. I'm trying out Joomla! for the first time and I'm trying to install 3.1.1 on an Apache 2.4 server running on my personal computer which is running windows 8. As far as I can tell I have all of the prerequisites (Apache, MySQL and PHP) but every time I open up the installer in my browser, fill in the details in step one and hit next, without fail, an endless loading bar comes up. The documentation for installation is pretty sparse when it comes to troubleshooting so I thought it best to come here. If it's worth noting, I also get an endless loading bar when I select a different language on the dropdown menu.

My browser isn't throwing any errors, Apache isn't throwing any errors, to my knowledge neither is PHP (though I can't seem to find any logs from it at all). I'm thinking the issues may have something to do with permissions but on Windows computers I'm not quite sure how to do that in great detail.

Some help would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by Pinpickle on Sat Jul 06, 2013 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There should be an apache error log you can check. Most wamp systems give you access to the error log via a menu option in the system tray icon. its certainly worth checking there. Also, this is a long shot, but try changing your browser. It shouldnt make any difference, but It quick and easy to try and worth "crossing it off the list"

I've checked the Apache error logs, there's nothing in there of any use. I had already tried Chrome and Firefox but I just tried IE to be sure and I get a similar result.

EDIT: I just decided to uninstall all of my server related things and give XAMPP a go. That worked the trick so there must have been some configuration wrong somewhere, I'm guessing in the PHP side of things.

This error is confusing, frustrating, and the installer provides no clues as to what might be happening, whether anything at all is happening, and how a user might address it. Joomla 3.x appears to not install out-of-the-box with PHP 5.5, and likely PHP 5.4.

Thanks BenLivingston. I switched my WAMP php version from 5.5.0 to 5.4.17 and the install worked. After switching back to 5.5 J! seemed to work fine but I figured the issue was going to come back and bite me. I'm glad I kept researching and I appreciate the fix -- I'll sleep better tonight.